Don,

By keeping your Westy instead of buying a new vehicle, you are preventing
one-new-vehicle-worth of environmental pollution, and you are keeping one
more vehicle (and any of it's more toxic components) out of the waste stream.

Besides, there are lots of beasts coming out of Detroit that get worse
mileage... a spanking new Jeep Liberty (a much lighter and smaller machine)
only gets 16. We don't even need to discuss the abysmal mileage of
Escalades, Suburbans, Explorers and other full-size SUVs.

These are the things I tell myself when I question the environmental impact
of westy ownership, anyway.

Tim

At 09:40 AM 5/4/2005 -0700, Don Williams wrote:
>So I have my 85 westy with manual transmission running about as perfect as
>this human is able to  get it----and I get 16 miles to the gallon.  I have
>worked methodically through my 20's list (the things that I was doing to
>get my vehicle to get 20 MPG, but after working through it  I'm faced with
>the probability that that ain't never going to happen (unless I go to a
>different engine).  I love my beast but I get ridiculed by friends who
>drive really horrible cars (eg, Pontiac firebirds and Cadillac eldorado's,
>really ugly and old cars that I look at as environmental disasters) but get
>better gas mileages than I do.  I have taken to mumbling when people ask me
>about the gas mileage, so that 16 MPG sounds something like 26 MPG.  I
>carry a heavy burden in this matter because I parade myself (in some
>circles) as an "environmentalist" and people who know what I drive ain't
>buying it.  My wife told me that if I gave a sh** about the environment I
>would be driving a Prius.  I carry this burden as best I can but it is hell
>to love a vehicle that gets such poor mileage.
>Should I auction it off on Ebay or say to hell with the critics???
>
>Don